Christine Rankin takes employer to court over $100k salary - board claims there was no job offer

Christine Rankin has won a ruling in the ERA confirming she was an employee of the Transforming Justice Foundation. Photo / Rachel Canning

Prominent politician and civil servant Christine Rankin, who was hired by a charitable organisation, only received a tenth of her salary because the board said it didn’t have any money and its CEO didn’t have the authority to employ anyone.

Christine Rankin, the former head of the Ministry of Social Development, former chief executive of the Conservative Party and former deputy mayor of Taupō, was hired by the Transforming Justice Foundation’s CEO Scott Guthrie in 2020 to be the new organisation’s child abuse spokeswoman.

The Transforming Justice Foundation (TJF) was set up to be a voice for justice system reform in New Zealand and hired former Sensible Sentencing Trust spokesman Guthrie to head it.

However, Guthrie offered Rankin the $100,000-a-year job, allegedly without the board or the foundation’s knowledge or permission.

To date, only a tenth of her salary has been paid despite Rankin having worked for them for roughly eight months.

In a ruling released by the Employment Relations Authority this week, the court has ruled Rankin was a legitimate employee of the foundation, although it hasn’t awarded that the outstanding wages be paid to her.

Rankin, now a Taupō District councillor, told NZME she didn’t want to have to go to the authority but she did so because the board had questioned the amount of work she’d done during her time with the organisation.

“I was really miffed to be treated like that when I’d given it everything I possibly could,” she said.

In her opinion “they seemed to think there was some obligation for people to work for nothing”.

Rankin said she was on the phone constantly to Guthrie and conducted many meetings with various stakeholders during her brief tenure at the foundation, so the implication that she was work-shy angered her.

Scott Guthrie. Photo / RNZ

She said there was recorded proof of the board agreeing to offer her the job but the foundation’s website and email server was taken down and with it a lot of the work she and Guthrie had done.

Guthrie told the authority he acted with the approval of the board in negotiating and entering an employment agreement with Rankin. He said he worked closely with her and that it was unfortunate the expected funding with which to pay her did not eventuate.

“The reason I have supported Christine Rankin is because she was employed by Transforming Justice and I supported that. In my opinion the board did a U-turn and just discovered they couldn’t afford to pay her salary,” he told NZME.

“What I’m supporting is what’s right, and what’s right is Christine Rankin should be paid what she’s owed.”

Guthrie said the authority’s ruling was fair and that while he was listed as a respondent against Rankin in the proceedings, he sees himself as being more in the middle. He was fired by the foundation in January 2021.

In the board’s collective submissions to the authority, it said an employment relationship between the foundation and Rankin never existed because there was no job offer and that Guthrie was not authorised to make such an offer. It said it is an unknowing, innocent party in the situation.

The board also told the authority it had no money to pay anyone in such a role as one Rankin says she was hired for, and that Guthrie’s position was voluntary, therefore implying that any work she did for the organisation would be as well.

Authority member Marika Urlich said a board meeting in May 2020 shows the parties discussing Guthrie’s proposal to organise a “contract” for Rankin, followed by an email from him offering her employment, to which she replied with her bank account and IRD number.

“I have considered whether the employment agreement was conditional on funding being secured. There is no such condition in the written employment agreement and there is insufficient evidence to establish such a term was agreed by the parties,” Urlich said.

Urlich said she was satisfied Rankin was employed by the foundation commencing in June 2020. However, she said there were no timesheets or records of hours worked by Rankin and she provided her own laptop, cell phone and paid for necessary travel herself.

Urlich said this lack of evidence was exacerbated by the board’s decision to shut down its email account, meaning a lot of the work Rankin had allegedly done was now lost.

“That said, Mrs Rankin has established she performed work for TJF and that the type of work she performed was consistent with the description of work in the employment agreement,” she said.

Urlich said a conference between the parties would be scheduled and Rankin told NZME she intended to pursue recouping the wages she wasn’t paid during her time at the foundation.

Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.